Michel Houellebecq, Accidental Porn Star

If you spend a good part of your career fomenting controversy, you should not reel in shock when it comes back and bites you in a certain part of your anatomy. At least that is the reaction of some people to the latest misfortunes of the infamous French author Michel Houellebecq.

Under highly disputed circumstances, Houellebecq gave his consent late last year to appear in an erotic film, KIRAC 27, subject to a few conditions about what the film would show. The film’s title derives from the name of the organization behind it, Keeping It Real Art Critics.

Upon realizing that the film was not just an edgy art-house movie, but a porno, full stop, Houellebecq decided he wanted no part of it. Too late. As reported in the Guardian and elsewhere, the author’s attempts to block release of the film have failed. His arguments before a Dutch court have fallen on deaf ears, and people will be able to see KIRAC 27 in spite of Houellebecq’s insistence that its makers were not open and honest with him about the film and how it would present Houellebecq to the world.

How Houellebecq ever came to be involved with such a project, and his efforts to stop distribution of KIRAC 27 once he realized what he had gotten into, are the subject of a new book, Quelques mois dans ma vie. The book is not yet available in English. But for those of us who read French, it is a ride as wild and provocative as Platforme, Soumission, Serotonin, Anéantir, and the many other books for which Houellebecq gained worldwide fame.

Déjà Vu?

In Quelues mois dans ma vie, Houellebecq places this fiasco within a chain of events going back many years, in which people who dislike him for one reason or another – and they are legion – have tried to ruin his life. His discusses his prosecution for incitement of racial hatred all the way back in 2002. Houellebecq tells his readers that the charge could not have applied, since the thing he stood accused of whipping up hatred against, namely Islam, is not a race. Islam, he reminds us, is a religion that many millions of people around the world, of virtually every race, practice. Though eventually cleared, the charges upended the writer’s life and incurred his temporary self-exile to Ireland.

Houellebecq also recounts the cancellation of an author tour he had planned to take in Morocco late last year. The tour ended up not happening because of fears over what enemies of the writer might do to get back at him for having disparaged Islam. It was far from the first, and probably not the last, time that one of his scheduled readings had to be called off.

Political Motives

The structure of the Quelques mois dans ma vie leaves no doubt that Houellebecq sees l’affaire KIRAC as the new chapter in his long-running persecution in a politically correct world. He says that he was deeply depressed at the time that he agreed to appear in the movie, and that the makers were not upfront with him about what they had in mind. Houellebecq went to a hotel where the director, Stefan Ruitenbeek, and others offered him a bottle of wine to get him to relax. Then the director, Houellebecq states, presented a contract almost as an afterthought. Or, as Houellebecq puts it, as a nagging formality that they had to get through in order to attain the joys of creation.

For the benefit of anyone who may be skeptical, Houellebecq reproduces the contract, in French translation, in the pages of his book. One of its most curious clauses is 1.3, which provides that Houellebecq’s face, and that of a young woman appearing in the film, will not be in the same frame as any image of genitalia. In other words, he explains, a viewer of the film might see a highly explicit image, but have reason to assume that the body part in question belongs to a stand-in. Nothing shown in the film will lead someone to think, “This is Houellebecq naked.” Or the young woman.

That is the conclusion that an Amsterdam court reached in March, ruling against Houllebecq’s move to deny release of the film. But you do have to wonder how solid a guarantee of privacy this is, given a director’s ability to present flash-edit and present multiple frames in quick succession.

As noted in the Guardian and elsewhere, the contract contains highly ambiguous language about whether the film will actually feature any explicit content. Maddeningly for Houellebecq, the contract stipulates that it is subject to the laws of the Netherlands and any adjudication will involve Dutch authorities and courts. If Houellebecq is like most people, he did not know a thing about Dutch law as it applies to privacy and the rights of people encouraged to expose themselves to the world in a film.

Houellebecq is probably furious with himself for not having a lawyer review the ambiguously worded contract before he signed it, or indeed for signing it at all. Only after a Dutch court’s decision to allow the distribution of KIRAC 27 did he realize the full extent of the director’s perfidy, Houellebecq tells us. “De la justice hollandaise, je ne connaissais rien.”

Of Dutch justice, I knew nothing. Now he knows. An Amsterdam tribunal’s decision on March 28 left him deeply disturbed and even drove him to believe less in humanity’s propensity for justice, he says. At least in France, when the paparazzi harassed him and invaded his privacy, they tended to signal their intent to photograph or videorecord him with words such as, “Excusez-moi, monsieur.” But Ruitenbeek and company took advantage of a depressed writer who did not realize what he was getting into, and the courts have signaled their contempt for his rights.

KIRAC 27 must not go out into the world. What a difficult position for a defender of free speech to be in. But one understands. The film is an invasion of privacy on a level he did not begin to understand when he signed on.

For Houellebecq, one of the most frustrating aspects of this affair is the counsel that some keep offering him: Don’t worry, it’s just the scandal du jour, people will forget all about the silly film as soon as the next sensation come along. To believe any such thing, Houellebecq insists, is to misunderstand how defamatory content lives forever on the internet. Here he quotes Kafka. “Le honte devait me survivre.” The hate will survive me.

Double Standards?

The question arises of whether people are treating Houellebecq so poorly, or ignoring the matter, because he is a politically incorrect author who has publicly criticized Islam and decried the cultural and demographic changes overtaking France.

Even if one concedes that Houellebecq should never have entertained the idea of appearing in KIRAC 27, and should never have signed the contact, without knowing what he was getting into, his account of himself as a hounded and persecuted writer is not without basis. The cancellation of his Morocco tour recalls an event back in 2015, when the Dubrovnik Summer Festival nixed plans to produce one of his plays over security fears. The festival’s organizer explicitly blamed the cancellation on the threat of terrorism.

Book and Film Globe spoke with Matthieu Malan, the owner of two bookstores, one in Casablanca and one in Rabat, that both planned to host Houellebecq last November. The disappointment was huge, Malan recalled.

“He cancelled the day he was supposed to board the plane. The whole thing had been arranged and booked weeks before, and he seemed enthusiastic. So were the Moroccan journalists who were to moderate his interventions and dine him on first day,” said Malan.

“Then he told his publisher in France, who expressed doubts over security. They told him not to go, or go, but at his own risk. Salman Rushdie’s stabbing which took place [a few months] earlier was a factor as well,” he added.

Indeed, the near-fatal stabbing of Salman Rushdie on a stage in western New York, just before a scheduled talk, must have cast a pall over the plans of a writer on the receiving end of hate for his statements about a non-western religion.

But PEN America, and other organizations supposedly devoted to free speech and the rights of writers worldwide, have been notably silent about the persecution of Houellebecq.

It was a nice gesture for PEN America to hold a gala for Rushdie while the author was on the mend after his near-murder. But you can barely find any mention of Houellebecq in recent PEN pronouncements, or even in a 2015 article about the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

PEN America doesn’t care. To paraphrase Orwell, all writers may be equals in their fundamental right to freedom of expression, but some are more equal than others.